Viets in Vogue

I've always thought that Viets are in vogue. But now that Angelina Jolie has welcomed Pax Thien into her multiculti brood, the people from the peaceful south, as we Viets are known, are representing. I think it's delicious justice that Jolie has two kids from previously warring nations: Maddox from Cambodia and Pax from Vietnam. I wonder if the tykes will play out the border skirmishes that have marred relations between their native lands in their new home. My cousin Peony joked that Pax might make flip-flops trendy.

Last week, at a dinner with colleagues from another newspaper and a PR firm, I tasted trendy Viet cuisine at Crustacean, a new high-end restaurant in Beverly Hills, Calif. An extension of San Francisco's Crustacean, where I had feasted on Dungeness crab and other modern, albeit pricey, adaptations of Viet dishes five years ago, this restaurant reminded me of an opium den with its dimly lit interior, ceiling fans, second floor interior patio made of dark wood and brightly multicolored carp swimming in the aquarium encased under the clear floors. But the restaurant wasn’t stuck in time as a colonial caricature. After all, there was a live band accompanying customers who had one too many lychee martinis on karaoke and thus turning the restaurant into another kind of caricature. Still, that distraction was minor, especially compared to the yummy food, which was prepared by the family's matriarch. And yummy is understood by everyone, no matter what language they speak.

This is the tapas trio comprising ahi tuna taco, eggroll stuffed with shrimp mousse and beef carpaccio. I think the traditional Vietnamese eggrolls are already perfect with their filling of carrots, turnips, ground pork and lump crab meat. Of the two wrappers that eggrolls are usually made with -- rice or egg -- I prefer the rice paper because it is lighter than the egg version and becomes translucent when fried. Still, Crustacean's egg wrapper version was a nice try at chichi crunchiness. The ahi tuna taco and beef carpaccio were both tasty, though I think they were probably added to the menu to appease the Euro-leaning Beverly Hills crowd.

Watercress is one of my favorite veggies. Perhaps the simplest dish my mom made was to boil the watercress in some water. After removing the cooked greens, she flavored the broth with a tomato, fish sauce and dried shrimp. We always had the boiled watercress and soup with shrimp sauteed in the shell with salt and some spices until they were a little caramelized. Here, Crustacean tossed watercress with frisee and mache, and plopped it atop thin slices of vine-ripened tomatoes and pears. The lemongrass vinaigrette was subtle, perhaps a little too much so that white pepper might have been a better seasoning than black pepper. Nonetheless, it was a very refreshing salad.

This ravioli made of rice flour was something that I could see my mom serving, if she ever had the time or energy to make banh cuon, or rice flour crepes. We usually buy it from someone who charges about $5 for a big plate that can feed three people. Crustacean opted to use fresh shrimp instead of the dried ones that were traditionally pulverized and seasoned with salt. It also stuffed the ravioli, whose wrapper was a tad thicker than expected, with braised fennel. The old-school Viet ravioli would have nothing but the dried shrimp or ground beef sauteed with dried mushrooms as filling. The garnish of fried onions added a touch of tradition.

For the fourth course, I was asked to choose between charbroiled tiger prawns and Mama Chef's famous garlic noodles or Chilean sea bass steamed on a bed of ginger and topped with scallions, cilantro and ginger citrus sauce. As you can see, I picked the shrimp with noodles. Delicious! Missy let me try a bite of her sea bass, which was also tasty. But the garlic noodles were the Viet version of comfort food, a pleasant antidote to carb-hostile Los Angeles.

Dessert was also an opportunity for me to exert my personality through the selection of a warm pistachio cake a la mode with apple ice cream or a warm walnut cake made with Godiva chocolate. So what if neither of these sweets originated in Vietnam. The chocolate cake was soft, gooey and rich. The caramelized candied walnuts sprinkled on top provided the perfect crunch. Unfortunately, I took only three bites before I had to bid quick adieus to my dinnermates and dash off to cover my last event for LA fashion week.

Daylight Saving Time

Like millions of people across the country, I lost an hour of sleep on Sunday due to Daylight Saving Time. I don't know why we practice such an arcane practice of setting the clock forward by an hour in the spring and back one in the fall. This year, the powers-that-be moved DST up three weeks, causing the resentment among folks like me who cherish their sleep to build earlier. To ease the pain of losing 3600 seconds of Sunday snoozing, I tried to relax as much as I could. I started my day with a facial from the amazing Christine Z. at Kinara. I'm already blessed with a good set of Viet genes, but under Christine Z.'s care, I'll be carded until I'm 45. After my pores got their nourishment, I fed my tummy with a modified version of eggs benedict florentine at Hadley's, located a couple of doors down from Kinara on Robertson Boulevard. I had to ask myself before ordering this dish: Just how many ways can you tweak eggs benedict florentine? Last week I tried a rendition featuring a crabcake. This Sunday's brunch replaced the Hollandaise sauce with a tomato puree seasoned liberally with pepper. I liked the tomato sauce much better than the Hollandaise sauce. It was more earthy, sweet and a better complement to the boiled spinach. I'm going to have to recreate this dish the next time I have guests over for Sunday brunch.

Cabana Conference

On Thursday, I trekked down to Dana Point, Calif., to cover a conference. It was one of those jobs where the venue was much more enticing than the subjects covered at the two-day affair. This was the view from my five-star hotel room.
This is this the closest that I'll get to being "corporate" with my laptop and recently acquired rose-colored cropped jacket with gold-trim buttons and a Peter Pan collar from Denmark's Baum und Pferdgarten, which is quickly becoming my new favorite label.
I like fancy hotels because they never miss the tiny details, such as the way they present the bathroom toiletries. In this case, good hygiene was encouraged with a bath gel and lavender-infused body lotion from Laboratoire Remede (that's French for laboratory remedy). Even the shower cap was packaged in a cute cube. Ooh la la.
The bathtub.
The bathroom was a third of the size of my apartment in Los Feliz.
I was going to count the number of threads on my sheets but I fell asleep.
I love sipping Earl Grey tea in the afternoon. Here's another self-portrait of me as reflected on the teapot.
I bailed on a talk by a four-star general to grab a late lunch in one of the hotel's restaurants. The crabcakes wore a funny hat of mache and a bright skirt of aioli.
My right hand cramped after taking notes for hours. I was also exhausted from schmoozing with sources who were twice my age. So I retired early from the mixer in the ballroom and ordered room service.
The pan-seared black sea bass was quite tasty. I liked the artichokes and potatoes in the lemon sauce. But together the fish and vegetables didn't work. The vegetables were too tangy and mushy. Steamed asparagus might have added a nice crunch to the entree.

After the panels ended, most of the conferencegoers went to play golf or board a ship for a whale-watching expedition. I drove myself to Fashion Island Mall in Newport Beach, Calif., and did a little shopping. The great thing about my job is that shopping is considered research and often encouraged. The bad thing about my job is that I can never entirely relieve stress through "retail therapy" because I'm always talking to salesclerks about what's selling and how's business at the store. Friday's retail therapy was cut short because Neiman Marcus didn't have the patent leather Mary Janes by Manolo Blahnik in my size. You know those shoes. They are the ones that Carrie Bradshaw, as played by Sarah Jessica Parker, stole from Vogue's fashion closet in an episode of "Sex and the City." I don't know if I'd ever wear those shoes outside of formal events that I have to cover for work. Maybe I could just wear them around the house in my underwear. I debated the practicality of that over lunch at Cafe Midi in the American Rag store. This was an eggs benedict florentine that substituted a crabcake for the Canadian bacon.

Good-Bye Gastronomy

Missy and Adam are leaving the company to work for another newspaper across town. During the good-bye lunch at Taste, my tears plopped into a bowl of potato leek soup.

Creamy food is usually comforting, or so I thought. I hoped the mayonnaise dressing in the Waldorf salad would console my contracting heart. But the dish was definitely a byproduct of the Los Angeles lifestyle. The thin white dressing barely coated the chicken and candied walnuts. The julienned green apples were as thin as the wrists of the starlets sitting behind us.

Later that night, I got my fix of comfort food at a party hosted by a quirky Norwegian clothing company. The word quirky is overused these days, but I can't think of any other way to succinctly describe how this trio of Scandinavian lads decided to use a pink stretch limo as their corporate car and spend their summer floating on some lake in the Norwegian boondocks in a fishing boat, also painted pink. At their party held at a too-hip-to-be-true Hollywood nightclub, where I last saw JT shake his ass, they recruited a couple of grannies to make heart-shaped waffles. Wearing a gray sweater, one of the matrons also shook her octagenarian ass to some disco beats.